User:Alhs124/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Rosalind Franklin

Answers to above questions:

The article explains much of the information, and I think it might be too much for a lead section. Some of the information about her moving from place to place may not be necessary for the introduction, and it might be better to keep just the sections based on what she was known for. The lead section does not introduce all of the main sections of the page, especially the one about sexism against Franklin, which is a big barrier for women scientists.

The content presented in this article seems to be reliable, and gives a good overview of her life. The content is relevant to Franklin's life.

While much of the information in this article seems to be presented in a neutral tone, there are moments where opinion statements leak into the article. In the section "recognition of her contribution to the model of DNA" there are opinions statements claiming that "there is no doubt" and "a clear timely acknowledgment would have been awkward" are not backed by a source. This means that an editor gave their opinion without backing it up. If these statements are included, they should say that x, y, z people assert that "there is no doubt," etc. This persuasive language is not neutral. The statements I just mentioned that do not have factual evidence and are just opinionated assertions. There are also a few statements without sources. For example, some statements in the Discovery of DNA section do not have citations. However, the article does have a range of sources, including older ones, and ones even from 2023. In this case, I think a few older primary sources may be necessary because she passed in the 1950s. Some sources also relate to womanhood, which is an important aspect of Franklin's career and the obstacles she faced. The links that I checked in the reference section work.

The article could be more concise, as it goes into a lot of detail about certain scientific pursuits by Franklin. While all of these sections and contributions are important, I don't believe all the detail in necessary and explained clearly to someone who may not have a lot of background in science. The article does not, from what I can see, have grammatical/spelling errors. The major topics are relevant to her career, but some points are too long that they seem daunting. The article does have good images that relate to Franklin's work. Some images, like her looking through a microscope could be better captioned. Currently it says "Franklin at work, 1955" which is not a terrible caption, but I feel like some more context as to what she was doing or where she was might better reflect the text. A few more images near the end of the article may be nice because they are somewhat congregated at the beginning. The images do not violate Wikipedia's guidelines. This article is rated B-class on the talk page. One discussion on the talk page actually already discusses the quotes that I mentioned that are not neutral. This article is apart of many WikiProjects including "Women in Science," "Biology" and more. One conversation on the talk page that relates to something we discussed in class is the changing of a topic header to better characterize action. In this case, the title of the topic that discusses sexism towards Franklin now reads "Alleged sexism towards Franklin" while it used to be "Allegations of sexism." This change emphasizes the need for clarity. This reminds me of the discussion we had about the George Floyd article and how it is now called "Murder of George Floyd," which puts responsibility on the guilty party. The strengths of this article include that it is clearly well-developed, has many sources, and gives thorough information about Franklin's life. However, I think that it might be too long and some sections could be cut down. There also seems to be a barrier to outsiders with the amount of science language used.

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I am interested in science, and women in science have been underrepresented in literature, especially in the past. I chose it because it looked like a thorough article and could help me better find skills to keen on what truly makes an article great and not just good.

Evaluate the article
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